


Stuck in the Middle with You

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Bickering, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Platonic Bed-sharing, Platonic Cuddling, Sharing a Bed, obi-wan's casual relationship with the truth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 00:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10864908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: "These are the flattest, saddest pillows I've ever seen.""They are sufficient," Obi-Wan says. "You must have very particular pillow needs."





	Stuck in the Middle with You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveronthetree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveronthetree/gifts).



> Here's the _other_ bed-sharing fic we talked about. *g*

"Just get in the bed, Obi-Wan."

"I'm perfectly comfortable where I am, Anakin," Obi-Wan replies from where he's stretched out on the durasteel floor of the surveyors' hut. 

There's just enough moonlight filtering in from outside that Ahsoka can see how _un_ comfortable he actually looks. Her lower back aches in sympathy.

"You're going to feel it in the morning," Anakin warns. "You're not as young as you used to be."

"I beg your pardon," Obi-Wan says. "I doubt that ancient mattress is any better."

Normally, Ahsoka might agree--the mattress is old and has grooves worn in it from years of use--but the frigid Mygeeto night makes the floor as cold as the hull of the Resolute in deep space.

"Better for your ancient back, though."

"You're not nearly as funny as you think you are, Anakin. I've already said I'm fine where I am. Please drop it."

Anakin snorts in disbelief. 

Ahsoka can tell he's just getting started, and she buries her head beneath a pillow in a futile attempt to tune out their bickering. Sadly, it doesn't work.

"I can feel you shivering from here. Ahsoka can hear your teeth chattering." He pokes her shoulder. "Tell him, Ahsoka."

"I can hear your teeth chattering, Master Kenobi," she says dutifully, the pillow muffling her voice but not her exasperation.

"That is hyperbole," Obi-Wan replies prissily. Ahsoka doesn't have to see him to picture his expression perfectly, eyebrows drawn, mustache drooping, and lips pressed tightly together in disapproval. It's usually not directed at her, though.

"Not by much," she mutters.

"Only because you have enhanced hearing," he says.

"I thought I was the snippy one."

"She's got you there, Obi-Wan. Come on. We don't bite. Unless you ask politely."

Now she can picture Anakin waggling his eyebrows suggestively, and makes a gagging sound. "Ugh, Master, please stop."

"Fine, no biting. Just get up here before you freeze to death. I don't want to have to explain your frozen corpse to the Council, okay?"

"I'm perfectly fine on the floor, Anakin. A Jedi can make do wherever they are, with whatever supplies are at hand."

It would sound more convincing if he weren't shivering, Ahsoka thinks, and Anakin actually says it out loud.

"You don't even have your cloak!" Anakin continues. "We've got the only blanket up here."

"How do you know I don't have my cloak?"

"I've known you for eleven years. I've seen you lose a cloak on every planet, moon, and space station from Alderaan to Zigoola." That last is said with a sudden bitter twist, but Ahsoka knows none of them will talk about it, even though it would probably be better all-around if they did. Getting Obi-Wan to talk about himself is even more difficult than cajoling him into bed, even when the alternative is a freezing durasteel floor and no blanket; she's got a higher tolerance for low temperatures than any human, and even she's chilled to the bone.

Anakin is still talking. "You're the despair of the Temple quartermaster. How do I know you don't have your cloak. Honestly, Obi-Wan." He actually sounds offended.

Obi-Wan sighs heavily, and Ahsoka can tell he's about to give in. She's not sure why he's kicked up such a fuss in the first place--it's not like they haven't been forced to share sleeping space before, sometimes in even smaller places, out on the battlefield. Though thinking about it now, he's never joined them. It's usually her and Rex and Anakin piled together in a tent too small for one regular-size being, let alone two large men and a growing Togruta. It's just another reality of the war, though, and better warm and slightly smothered than cold and alone, she thinks. Apparently, Obi-Wan is not of the same mind. 

"Fine," Obi-Wan says after another long-suffering sigh that is just for show as far as Ahsoka can tell. "If you really think that it's not going to collapse under our combined weight."

Anakin is silent for a long moment. Then he says, "I can't tell if you're insulting us or yourself, and I'm too cold and tired to care, but the bed is structurally sound. I checked it myself." He huffs indignantly. "Did you really think I'd let my padawan get into a bed that was going to collapse beneath her? Let alone get in it with her?"

Now it's Obi-Wan's turn to huff. "I suppose not." His joints crack as he stands, and Ahsoka bites back a sympathetic wince, knowing he wouldn't appreciate it. "Budge over, then, will you?"

She peeks out from beneath her pillow to see Obi-Wan looming over the other side of the bed, where Anakin is sprawled out like a Plavonian starfish on a dinner plate. He rolls closer to her so Obi-Wan can climb in beside him.

"No need to go that far. Leave Ahsoka some room. The poor girl is already clinging to the edge of this ridiculously tiny bed."

"Yes, Master." Anakin rolls his eyes but doesn't move away. There's not really anywhere else for him to go. The bed is not as tiny as Obi-wan is making it out to be, but it is definitely too small for three people unless they really like each other a lot. "Whatever you say, Master." He punches his pillow in an attempt to make it fluff up.

"That won't work," Ahsoka tells him. "These are the flattest, saddest pillows I've ever seen."

"They are sufficient," Obi-Wan says. "You must have very particular pillow needs."

"Maybe I do," Ahsoka answers, leaving the what's it to you implied. She definitely does, and these are not up to her exacting standards. She misses the nest of pillows in her room at the Temple even more than usual.

"You can use my shoulder," Anakin offers with an endearing half-grin.

"Thanks but no thanks, Skyguy."

He shrugs as well as he can while lying on one side. "Suit yourself."

Silence falls, broken only by the sound of their breathing and the occasional creak of bedsprings as someone tries to adjust their position. There really isn't much room for that, though.

"Would it be better if you were in the middle, Ahsoka?" Obi-Wan asks just as she's almost asleep.

It would be better if she had decent pillows and a bed to herself, but she has to deal with the circumstances she's in, not wish for things she can't have at the moment.

"Okay," she says, climbing over Anakin before he can protest. In between them, there's much less chance of Anakin hogging the blanket and leaving her out in the cold.

"I would never," he says, catching the drift of her thoughts across their bond. She raises her brows at him. "Okay, I probably would. But I wouldn't _mean_ to."

"Intentions are all well and good," Obi-Wan says, shifting again so they're all fully covered by the blanket now. Pressed between them, Ahsoka is already warmer than she was at the edge of the bed. "But unless they translate into right actions--"

"They won't keep me warm," Ahsoka interrupts before he can start lecturing.

Obi-Wan laughs softly. "Exactly." He takes a deep breath and exhales noisily. "Try to sleep now. We still have to exfil tomorrow without getting caught, and it will go better if we've had some rest."

"Yes, Master," she and Anakin both murmur, which earns them a brief burst of warmth in the Force, and a gentle command to _sleep_. Ahsoka lets it take her.

A couple of hours later, she wakes warm and sluggish, as Anakin shifts beside her. As long as she's known him, he's been a restless sleeper. Obi-Wan is warm and solid behind her, one arm wrapped securely around her waist. He's snoring loud enough to wake the entire planet, or at least make her montrals vibrate. Her face is buried in Anakin's neck and she's got a lock of his hair in her mouth.

Gross. She spits it out as quietly as she can and rubs a hand over her mouth to rid herself of the sensation.

"It's just protein," he says, amused.

"What do you know?" she replies, cranky over being woken up. "I heard you eat bugs."

"Where'd you hear that?"

She'd heard it from Rex, who'd heard it from Cody, who'd heard it from Obi-Wan himself, who had apparently been so grossed out that even his Jedi Master aplomb had been shaken, but she just says, "I hear things." Her mouth curves in a challenging grin that makes Anakin snort with laughter.

"And anyway, how is that any different from eating shrimp?"

She makes a face. "I don't eat those either."

"Your loss." Anakin's shrug this time is all in his eyebrows.

"Some of us are trying to sleep," Obi-Wan says from behind her.

"Some of us are awake because you snore like a buzz-droid," Anakin responds.

"I do no such thing."

Ahsoka tilts her head back so she can see his face. "I'm afraid it's true, Master."

His eyebrows come down in a forbidding V and his beard brushes her right lek when he says, with great dignity and absolutely no truth whatsoever, "No one has ever complained before."

Ahsoka slews her head around to meet Anakin's startled gaze, and sees that he's as overwhelmed as she is by all the potential responses to that blatant falsehood.

Anakin opens his mouth and shuts it again and heaves a sigh of his own. "If you say so, Obi-Wan." He pulls his own pillow out from under his head and throws it at Obi-Wan. "Maybe that will help."

Obi-Wan huffs disdainfully but folds the pillow and shoves it beneath his head. "I'm going back to sleep now. I suggest you two do the same."

Anakin pats Ahsoka's hip, as if that will distract her from the way he's trying to take over her pillow. "Go back to sleep, Snips."

"It would be easier if you weren't invading my pillow."

"You're not even using it." His smugness is radiating through the Force. "I told you I was a good pillow."

She sniffs with as much dignity as she can muster, and then repositions herself comfortably in the space between his neck and his shoulder. "Go to sleep, Master."

His laughter follows her into her dreams.

The next time she wakes, weak early morning sunlight is shining through a crack in the raggedy curtains, and they're all tangled together in a warm heap. Ahsoka's half on top of Anakin and they have their arms around each other; Obi-Wan's chin is hooked over her shoulder and one arm is draped over her hip. His fingers curl loosely in Anakin's tunic, as if Obi-Wan's trying to keep him from rolling off the bed. His beard tickles her lekku but she suppresses the instinct to twitch at the sensation. 

"Come on, Snips," Anakin says, as if he's not still lying there beneath her. "We've got to reach the landing zone by oh eight thirty."

Obi-Wan throws the blanket back and lets the cold air in. All three of them grunt in complaint, and it takes a moment or two for them to sort out their tangled limbs. Anakin trips over his own feet in an attempt to not touch the freezing floor until he's got his boots on, and only his quick reflexes and strong command of the Force keep him from falling flat on his face.

Obi-Wan, clearly the most awake of the three of them, sits on the edge of the bed and levitates his boots into his hands. Ahsoka follows his example and can't keep her mouth from curving into a smirk when Anakin glares at them as he hops around, trying to get his own boots on.

The water in the refresher runs rusty and cold, so none of them spend much time on washing up, and there's no caf or tea to be had, so they're all three a little grumpy. Even so, it was the best night's sleep any of them has had in ages. Ahsoka's just about to say so when Obi-Wan says, "Let us never speak of this again." 

"Don't worry," Anakin replies, clapping Obi-Wan's shoulder with his gloved hand, "I won't tell anyone you snore."

Ahsoka chokes on the sip of water in her mouth, because she's pretty sure that nerf left the barn ages ago, but she schools her expression to one of Jedi placidity when Anakin glares at her. Still, she can feel his amusement in the Force, and beneath that, slightly better hidden, Obi-Wan's as well.

It's as good a way as any to start a day.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Stuck in the Middle with You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11494005) by [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins), [victoria_p (musesfool)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p)




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